Yahya Jammeh

Yahya Jammeh (25 May 1965-) was President of The Gambia from 22 July 1994, succeeding Dawda Jawara.

Biography
Yahya Jammeh was born on 25 May 1965 in Kanilai, the Gambia, and in 1984 he joined the Gambian National Army. In 1992 he rose to become the commander of the military police, and in 1994 he led a coup d'etat against President Dawda Jawara, seizing power for himself. He founded the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction to support him in the 1996 presidential elections, which he won; he proceeded to win several more elections. In 2015, his party held 43/48 National Assembly seats and 4/5 Pan-African Parliament seats. On 21 March 2006 Colonel Ndure Sham failed to seize power in The Gambia while Jammeh was gone and fled to Senegal, and on 30 December 2014 a faction of the Presidential Guard under Lamin Sanneh failed to seize power, leading to another failed coup with 4 deaths. Jammeh became known as a dictator who encouraged violence against gays, killed migrants from Ghana and other countries, and clamped down on the free press. On 12 December 2015 he ended the secularism of Gambia, which had a 90% Muslim majority, making it an Islamic republic to erase all traces of colonialism.